Seasonal Cinnamon Fig Smoothie

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Seasonal Cinnamon Fig Smoothie

I was going to title this post “now give us some figgy smoothie!” but then decided that it’s not quite Christmas carol season.

It is, however, fig season, and what a glorious season that is! It took me a long time to come around to figs because of my fruit squeamishness issue (those of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I was really squeamish about eating fruit as a kid—I wouldn’t even touch blueberries—and that I carried some of my odd aversions into adulthood; to this day, I won’t eat kiwis, and I’m scared to taste persimmons). Now that I have learned to enjoy figs, they’re one of my favorite fruits, fresh or dried. This fall, I’ve been taking advantage of their relatively short season by putting them into many of my salads. Earlier this week, I decided to branch out and put them into a smoothie.

Smart move! This was one of the tastiest smoothies I’ve had in a while. The ingredients are simple: fig, banana, cinnamon, hemp milk (or any non-dairy milk), spinach, and a little hemp protein is on offering if you want to “boost” your smoothie. If you’re feeding picky eaters or don’t care for spinach, it’s fine to omit. The real flavor stars here are the fig and the banana, which create a sweet, creamy, seasonal drink.

Blend all ingredients in a high speed blender, and serve! As with most green smoothies, it looks a little bit spooky, but tastes delicious.

Hope you all give it a try! For many fig smoothie ideas, you can also check out Lori and Michelle’s blog. They are true fig devotees!

Later this week, I’ll share a wonderful new fig salad dressing I made with the same batch of figs whence came this smoothie. I look forward to that, and other posts this week, including a recap of a lovely vegan dinner party I was invited to, and the scrumptious, easy, high-raw, vegan brownies I prepared for it.

Oh my goodness gracious, I don’t think I can adequately express my deep adoration of figs with words alone; it would probably require me climbing upon a rooftop and singing horribly off-key. Needless to say, I’m thrilled you decided to give them a try. Now if you’ll excuse me, I must immediately run to the grocery store and buy their entire stock of figs.

Figs are my absolute favorite fruit, and any time I see fresh ones in the store, I immediately buy two containers of them. Always. And then I eat them all in 2 days. While this smoothie looks delicious, fig season is so precious to me that I cannot even imagine diluting them in a smoothie.

Gena, I adore fresh figs and most kinds of fruit. I drink a breakfast smoothie every morning and can’t wait to try this! Thanks for sharing. What a beautiful green color, too.

BTW, regarding persimmons, they are delicious but you absolutely have to eat one that is perfectly ripe, which means soft and mushy. Go shopping with a persimmon-knowledgeable friend to guide you. If they are unripe, they have an unpleasant astringent flavor and you will be scared off them forever!

(Without having read you blog, I wonder if some of your childhood fruit aversion came from eating industrially produced, non-local, unripe fruit? So much supermarket fruit is bleah. I thought I was done with apples until I fell in love with them all over again at my farmer’s market–so many exquisite and delicious varieties are grown here!)

Hi Gena. Been stalking your blog for a long time but this is my first comment. I’m casting my vote with the ‘gotta try persimmons’ crowd. They’re super sweet and mild tasting and absolutely bomb. But I agree with Daniel; they have to be EXACTLY ripe or they taste funny.
I recently began to trust figs after eating them in salads and atop my (vegan) french toast. This smoothie looks awesome and I may have to pester my mom for some figs.
Anyway, love your blog! I’m not a full blown vegan, but I am a new vegetarian and egg-allergy sufferer, so I’m most of the way there right? LOL. Love your tasty eats; I made roasted chickpeas for the first time the other day and I now owe you my soul for teaching me such deliciousness. Good luck with school as well; I graduated with my B.A. in May and I promise you, though there seems to be no light at the end of the tunnel, it’s there and before you know it you’ll have your diploma in hand and wondering in shock where all that time went.
Hugs
Illy

frozen figs lend an incredible creaminess to my smoothies and when i’m not feeling an avocado or banana i def sub these in. i make a really rich vanilla-chai fig smoothie that i will really miss come these colder months. it’s hard for me to start my morning with a frozen drink!

Ha ha ha, it’s going to be Christmas carol season in a week or two for this piano teacher, the kids have to learn their songs in advance! It took me a while to come around to figs too, but now I adore them – which is kind of unfortunate because I’ve only found them in my city once. Ever. You better believe I bought the whole bin, though, ha ha! If I happen to find them again (one can hope!), I’m totally doing up this smoothie.

MMMM! I’ll be honest and confess that I was scared of figs when I was a kid. Opening them up creeped me out. the insides were too weird looking for my tastes. Now I love them! But I haven’t seen them in the store for about a month. I thought fig season had ended. I’m gonna look harder now.

I tried my first ever persimmon the other day. It wasn’t ripe but I had a whole bag anyway and I was curious. I think it’s nice! In this semi-ripe state, it tastes more like mango than anything else, but it had an apple or slightly under-ripe melon texture. Also vaguely reminiscent of ‘bubblegum flavour’ and of how apple chunks taste in traditional fruit salad when they’ve kind of marinated in the pineapple and cherry juice. It just tastes fruity and a little perfumed. (Not nearly as strongly perfumed as mango, if that bothers you at all.) Now I’m waiting for them to get softer, to see if they’re even better If you can get one, you should give it a go!

Fruit is really bad quality nowadays. I’m sure that when I was a kid, even supermarket fruit was soft and sweet. Now the stuff in the supermarket is hard as rocks, and even the expensive organic fruit just tastes like it’s picked a fortnight early instead of a month. I can’t afford my own orchard, though!

The smoothie looks great! Fresh figs are difficult/expensive to get hold of here, especially organic, so I might try with soaked dried figs. Thanks for the recipe!